New Challenges for Human Capital Formation and Sustainable Development
Wolfgang Lutz, Warren C. Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov,
Editors
© IIASA and Earthscan March 2004

The 20th century was the century of explosive population growth, resulting in unprecedented impacts. In contrast, the 21st century is likely to see the end of world population growth and become the century of population aging. Now we are at the crossroads of these demographic regimes. This book presents fresh evidence about our demographic future and provides a new framework for understanding the underlying unity in this diversity. It is an invaluable resource for those concerned with the implications of population change in the 21st century.

"... the most innovative book on population change I have ever seen: a must for all policy and decision makers."
Hans van Ginkel, Rector, United Nations University

"This book makes several important contributions to rigorous thinking about population dynamics in the 21st century. With state-of-the-art modeling of demographic change in populations stratified by age, gender, education levels, and other key characteristics, Lutz, Sanderson, Scherbov, and their co-authors offer a series of fascinating studies that link demographic change with environmental stress, food insecurity, urbanization, and other critical social processes. This book builds on important earlier contributions from the IIASA team, and like the earlier studies, will be widely read and highly influential among demographers, economists, and other modelers of long-term dynamic social processes."
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University

"In addition to innovative research on uncertainty in forecasts this volume contains original applications of population projections to the analysis of trends in human capital and the environment."&
John Bongaarts, Vice President for Policy Research, Population Council“

[A] fresh look at likely trajectories of the human population in 13 major regions of the world over the next century. While rapid population growth will remain a serious problem in some regions, overall, the authors conclude, ‘an explosive world population growth is not our future.’ Rather than sheer numbers of people, their main concern is the quality of life and well-being of people. They show how demographic variables will interact with education, the environment, agriculture, infectious disease (especially HIV), urbanization, and climate change. The result is a valuable synthesis of the methodological innovations applied with remarkable creativity to real and important problems."
Joel E. Cohen, Head, Laboratory of Populations, Rockefeller University and Columbia University

This book of vast scope starts by building a solid base on population, then takes up literacy, disease, resources, and other elements that among them will determine human welfare over the foreseeable future. It is valuable both for the data it presents and for the models and concepts in terms of which it evaluates and projects them into the future.
Nathan Keyfitz, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

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Last updated: 24 Feb 2011